SUICIDES IN RUSSIA.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XV, Issue 2106, 26 February 1887, Page 3

SUICIDES IN RUSSIA.

The St Petersburg correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald states that suicides are so common as to nave assumed the appearance of an epidemic. It takes eccentric startling forms. A woman soaks her dress in kerosene and sets fire tojherself, lovers wish to die together in a last embrace, friends render each other the service of mutually blowing each other's brains out, a father kills his tferee children and hangs himself. In Moscow, a young man, Doctor Boianus, first poisons his daughter, aged three, then calmly assists at the agony of an adored wife, and when he has fully assured himself that wife and child are dead, swallows his own dose of prussic acid. What is stranger than the fact of the suicide is the often trifling reasons that tempt men thereunto. Dr Boianus left a letter explaining that his practice was too small to live on in comfort. All energy, '.all vitality seems tobedying outof theyounggeneration. Poverty, even misery, is a great inducement for a man to work, to redouble his efforts to get a subsistence for a young wife and child, but the Slavonian is wanting in initiative, and entirely helpless undermisfortune. A want of moral courage is a characteristic of the Russian, so brave when mere physical courage is wanted.

One of our smartest gunnery lieutenants bad tie opportunity a short time ago of witnessing the everyday gun drill on .board a German ironclad. He declares that for quickness, precision, and more especially Silence, the performance was very superior to what is usually seen in British ships. The reason is not far to seek. The Germans con - sider gunnery the real business of a man-o war's man, and look upon sail-drill as a useful sort of recreative gymnastics. We make playing with masts and yards almost the be-all and end-all of a sea-man s duty, and merely throw in a little gunnery for appearance sake.— Army and Navy Gazette.